Deep Background with Noah Feldman

Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology at Yale University School of Medicine, explains what types of coronavirus vaccines are currently being researched and evaluates their chances of success.

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Marta Figlerowicz, an associate professor of comparative literature and English at Yale, discusses classic works of literature about pandemics from Boccaccio's The Decameron to Camus' The Plague. Plus, she psychoanalyzes Noah's love of detective novels.

Marta Figlerowicz's Pandemic Reading List

• The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
• Stalingrad by Vasily Grossman 
• Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman 
• Molloy by Samuel Beckett 
• Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett 
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
• The Plague by Albert Camus 
• Occupation Journal by Jean Giono

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Dr. Louise Ivers, the executive director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Global Health, explains why states like Massachusetts are investing in a strategy called contact tracing to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus.

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Pardis Sabeti, a computational biologist at Harvard and the Broad Institute, discusses when and how to re-open colleges and universities, why the US is behind other countries when it comes to containing the spread of coronavirus, and a plan to stop pandemics in the future

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Omai Garner, the director of clinical microbiology testing at UCLA Health, explains why more Americans have not been tested for COVID-19.

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Carl Bergstrom, a computational biologist at the University of Washington and co-author of the forthcoming book "Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World," explains how to make sense of all the different coronavirus models and discusses the impact of misinformation on public health.

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Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers helped get us through the 2008 financial crisis. He has some ideas about what to do to get through this one.

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To mark the start of Passover, Idan Dershowitz, a biblical scholar and junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, discusses the ten plagues of Egypt in the context of the coronavirus pandemic.

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Lydia Dugdale, the Director of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at Columbia University, discusses how medical supplies will likely be allocated if there are shortages.

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Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, discusses what treatments for COVID-19 are currently being researched, and why rushing the scientific process can be risky.

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